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Telstra is facing a battle with trade unions over fears it is set to announce plans to axe at least 400 local jobs in regional areas from its ailing Sensis directories’ business later this week.

The Community and Public Sector Union took the telco to the Fair Work Commission on Monday in a bid to get it to come clean on its plans, and get a ruling enforcing more transparency in future jobs-related strategic planning.

That review is understood to involve as many as 1000 positions, but the CPSU said it believed Telstra is due to pull the trigger on 400 of those roles within Sensis this week.

Aside from objecting to the job losses, the union’s complaint is that Telstra’s plans to jettison the Sensis staff have been under way since well before Christmas, in advance to the sale of 70 per cent of the division to US private equity firm Platinum Equity in January.

It is seeking a ruling from the Fair Work Commission that would require Telstra to reveal to workers when consultation begins related to the outsourcing of jobs.

Monday’s hearing was adjourned until later in the week after Telstra, through US law firm Seyfarth Shaw, declined to either confirm or deny the union’s claims about its plans.

CPSU national president Michael Tull said Sensis executive leadership team would meet on Tuesday, and he expected them to officially decide on the redundancies before announcing them to staff. By doing that, Telstra would avoid returning to Fair Work Australia later in the week.

He said the job losses would involve 200 sales staff, and roughly the same number in post-sales support. The company is understood to be moving to a telesales model, rather than having face-to-face workers to handle more than 50,000 customers.

Job cuts to hit regional areas

The jobs will be difficult politically as many will come from regional areas, already struggling due to the declining manufacturing sector. As well as Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne, affected sites include Geelong, Hobart, Townsville, Ballina, Cairns, Coffs Harbour, Adelaide, Wollongong, Darwin, the Sunshine and Gold Coasts, the NSW Central Coast, Newcastle and Penrith.

It is understood that telesales work already conducted in Sydney and Melbourne will be sent to Telstra’s new centre in the Philippines, where workers have already been trained up.

Mr Tull said it was unacceptable for Telstra to keep its plans under wraps for so long, while knowing that it would take affected workers a long time to find new roles. “We have been hearing concerns about this since before Christmas, and right up until the Fair Work hearing Sensis is still refusing to rule it out or in,” he said. “It is an awful position for the affected staff to be in, as they hear the rumours, particularly in regional areas like Ballina and Geelong, where everyone knows the job market is really tight and you need as much time as possible to try and find a new job.

A Telstra spokeswoman said the company took its obligations to employees very seriously, particularly in relation to fair and reasonable consultation on changes that have a demonstrable impact on them.

She said the company had a long track record of consulting with employees and their representatives before making decisions to implement significant changes and that it would respect employees by having them be the first to know about potential changes that may affect their jobs.

“We can confirm we took part in a conciliation conference at the Fair Work Commission today. We will respect the confidential nature of the conference and will not comment on specific discussions that took place,” she said.